The other night Julie, Elizabeth and I drove 13 hours from our home in Lancaster, PA to my hometown of Pekin, IL. It was a pretty ugly drive, but I'm glad to be here visiting with my family. But it may have been one of the worst times for us to drive down here... not only do we get an extra hour of time traveling from PA to IL, but daylight savings also changed the back an hour in the midst of our traveling also. Which sounds really awesome, but someone forgot to explain to Elizabeth (our ten month old) that she could sleep for an extra couple of hours and no one would mind...(someone could tell her she could sleep a couple extra hours every night and I'm confident no one would mind). So she got up @5am here, which would actually have been 7am last week in PA, hopefully that's not too confusing. But Julie and I were exhausted from all of the driving and hadn't caught up on our sleep. So we got up and tried to comfort her and get her to take a bottle and whatever we could do to try and coerce her into go back to sleep. But it seemed like nothing we could do would get her back into sleep-mode. I went and threw away her soaked diaper and prepared a bottle and by the time I got back into the room we are staying in she had totally calmed down and Julie was holding her and her blanket, laying in bed... I was super relieved that she had mellowed out, but also a little confused at how Julie has some sort of special motherly power that I clearly do not... I mean when I get home from work, Elizabeth says, "da-da." When she's done eating and its time to play... "da-da." When she sees something funny, or someone else makes her laugh..."da-da." I mean it feels really great to have someone love being around me so much. But when she falls and hits her head she says, "ma-ma." Time to have a bottle... "ma-ma." She isn't feeling well or basically anything is wrong in Elizabeth land... "ma-ma." There must be some sort of motherly ability that moms have that allow them to connect with the babies... I must say, my wife is an awesome mom, she is always there for the baby, always caring for her, making her laugh, feeding her... basically everything. Being at home, staying with my mom makes me realize how especially awesome Julie is as a mom. My mom is pretty amazing. I'm not pulling any punches her she is awesome! I've never doubted for a second that I have a terrific mother. Being able to see Julie and my mother in the same setting is really cool for me to see how awesome they both are. Needless to say, I have some really awesome women in my life... (including baby Elizabeth, you won't find a happier baby anywhere). Maybe today, try and take an extra couple of minutes to thank your mom for being awesome... or if she's not that awesome try and reflect and make yourself a little better, or try and select a significant other who is awesome. There is a lot to be learned by where we come from... our family, our past, the people who have impacted us. In the Bible the used genealogies to decipher if a person was important or not... you know those long lists of names before the story of Jesus... that's a genealogy. They are still important to us today, just not in the same way. It's not necessarily about who your parents are, but who your parents raised that matters most. The point is, your parents raised you and you are a reflection of them... Maybe you are an opposite reflection... maybe you had crummy parents and vowed never to be like them so you have been raised to repel the qualities of your parents. All in all we need to be a reflection of our heavenly father. If Jesus isn't in our spiritual genealogy we will never be fulfilled enough to reach our potential...Thanks so much to my mom for being awesome and to my super wife, for being such an amazing woman and mother. Love ya.